The Orville

Tomorrow & Tomorrow & Tomorrow

Time travel is always a tricky card to play. The Orville Season 2 Episode 13 uses it to set up a finale in a clever-ish way but it's problematic and not necessarily in a good way. The episode is most obviously a rehash of Star Trek: the Next Generation Season 6 Episode 24 wherein Commander Riker discovers a version of himself created by a transporter accident eight years previously. Of course, transporters don't exist in the world of The Orville (as I often need to be ... more

Sanctuary

It's an indicator of the level of confidence MacFarlane and his team have developed in their writing that The Orville Season 2 Episode 12 was able to avoid cliche and the expected conclusion in this Moclan conflict. Mind you, the diplomatic conclusion we DID get left a lot of issues on the table. At the level of the Planetary Union, the Moclans are the first dissenters we've met and they are neither appeased nor denied their demands. ... more

Lasting Impressions

If you thought that The Orville Season 2 Episode 11 felt kind of deja-vu-ish, you'd be right. All this has happened before... and that's okay. At its heart, The Orville is an homage to sci-fi shows and, in the overwhelming majority of cases lately, it does it well so I'm willing to cut it a lot of slack when it chooses to tighten its focus to one or two crew members for an episode. And Malloy has been stepping up considerably this season, with Scott Grimes really demons... more

The Orville Recap: Ok, Buddy, Time to Wash Your Mouth Out With Gordon!

Coming out of Part 1 of The Orville‘s “Identity,” we were left to wonder if Isaac perhaps was playing the long game and waiting for the right time to usurp his Kaylin kinfolk, or if the invading synthetic species would ultimately be thwarted by being “powered down” en masse a la The Avengers, Independence Day and, apparently, Star Trek: TNG. The answer delivered in Part 2 this Thursday, it turned out, was… a bit of both. more

The Orville Puts Viewers On Edge With a Very Dark, Very Discomfiting Twist

The seventh episode — the first half of a two-parter — of the Fox adventure series’ strong sophomore run found the crew setting course for Isaac’s home planet of Kaylon, after the science/engineering officer suddenly powered down. Upon arriving on Kaylon 1, Captain Mercer & Co. received as warm a welcome as one might expect from a species of synthetic, mechanical lifeforms. Their leader, Kaylon Primary, explained that Isaac had been deactivated now that his mission to observe the humans — ostensibly to inform a decision on... more

The Orville Season 2: Isaac Gives Claire Notes on Parenting — 2019 FIRST LOOK

Having previously suggested that vaporizing Claire’s children could tame the restless youths (and good), The Orville‘s Isaac seems to be offering a more sensible approach in this first look at Season 2 of Fox’s space dramedy. When the Seth MacFarlane-produced and -led series returns on Sunday, Dec. 30 at 8/7c (following an NFL doubleheader), Ed and the crew race to save a small group of survivors on a planet about to be destroyed by its sun, while Bortus and Klyden sta... more